Halloween Comes Early With Dracula's Arrival

Richard Rice Alan

I never thought I'd see a tightrope act at the Surflight but tonight I
saw eight people walking the wire without a net. I'm talking, of
course, about Dracula, the Surflight's current production. Dracula is a
tightrope act because in this jaded age the very idea of Dracula
resides not in Transylvania but in the borderlands between melodrama
and camp.

Dracula is a genuine melodrama. The Count himself must be an imposing,
charismatic, larger than death character who projects supremely
confident evil. That's hard to do on film but damned near impossible on
stage, where the actor doesn't have close-ups and camera angles to help
him out. The hardest part is that the closer the actor comes to
achieving the persona he wants to project the closer he comes to
self-parody. If he doesn't go far enough we won't believe he's really
Dracula; If he goes too far, he's Count Chocula.

Fortunately Richard Rice Alan, who plays the King of Vampires,
successfully walks the tightrope and gives us exactly the Dracula the
role calls for. He is formal and reserved without being stiff and he
affects a Transylvanian accent without sounding like he's doing a bad
Bela Lugosi impression.

Alan is deadly serious in his portrayal of the celebrated hemophage and
just as important, his castmates play it straight too. That's a big
part of why the play works.

Robert Welch, who was almost over the top in Lend Me A Tenor smoothly
segues from comedy to drama as Dracula's nemesis Van Helsing. Between
his completely different character and his gray hair and mustache I
didn't even recognize him at first. John Wilkerson as Dr. Seward and
Scott McGowan as John Harker round out the team dedicated to Dracula's
destruction. They too play it straight to great effect.

Renfield, Dracula's pathetic, insane lackey is portrayed by Andrew
Foote. In less capable hands Renfield, with his ravings and
gesticulations, could shatter the fragile illusion of dread created by
Dracula and his foes. But Foote never goes over the edge. John Bow, a
newcomer, does yeoman's work as the lunatic's keeper.

There are just two female roles. After Kristen Bohr's turn as Sister
Amnesia in Nunsense, I was eager to see her in a different role. As Dr.
Seward's cockney maid, she continues to show promise.

The part of Dracula's prime target Lucy is played by Erin Esposito, who
gets to play the character three different ways. Whoever designed her
makeup knew what he or she was doing. First Lucy is a wan, weak and
drained victim and her ugly wig and cadaverous look actually make this
lovely actress look quite unappealling. Then, as the vampiest of
vampiric seductresses she's suddenly wickedly enticing. Finally, when
she's no longer under the Count's spell, she looks, well, normal.

I had a minor quibble with Dracula's makeup. I thought his lips were
perhaps a bit too bright a shade of cerise for a guy who'd been dead
for five centuries. Against his stark white face I thought it looked
too much like lipstick.

So as you can see I have to reach a bit to come up with a criticism of
this production. It's a great show. I can't say Dracula actually
frightened me. But it did impress, surprise and entertain me.

Evening performances run through October 8, 2003 at 8:00 p.m. with matinees on October 9 and 12 at 2 p.m.